


Rearrange Just A Day Or Two

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 01:19:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10843512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: Five lies...





	Rearrange Just A Day Or Two

She remembers a gym class half way through eighth grade. She'd lied about her height because the number displayed on the measuring tape stuck to the wall behind her head was embarrassing and she couldn't bring herself to admit the truth.

It was stupid, she knows this. Altering the number by an inch and a bit didn't change a thing and she was still always picked last for basketball despite the fact that she was faster than anyone else in the class.

But it did mean that when the numbers were compared over flavoured milk and fries at fifth period lunch she wasn't the shortest in the class for the first time since kindergarten.

 

 

 

 

 

She's lied to April more times than she can count. And about more things than she'd really care to think about. Boys, grades achieved in medical school, the fact that she thought April was a great cook... but mostly boys.

There's only been three. Maybe three and half.

She refuses to count the three months she spent on the arm of the eventual prom king as a full relationship. Everyone who knew them could see he was only tolerating her presence because she did his math homework and guaranteed the security of his spot on the football team.

Jason O'Connor. Asshole.

She thinks Alex Karev and Jason O'Connor would have got along famously. Though she suspects Alex was more than capable of doing his own math problems.

 

 

 

 

 

Her parents packed up and moved to Delaware to be closer to her aging grandmother three months after she started at Seattle Presbyterian. She lies to herself every day that she doesn't miss them. That she's an adult now and twice weekly conversations with her mother over the static of the phone line are more than she really needs.

The photo of them on her bedroom dresser is faded but the memories she has of them are not. Shuts her eyes tight against the image and only just resists the urge to follow suit on a red-eye into Wilmington.

 

 

 

 

 

It was more than clear long before the merger shoved them even closer together that Charles Percy had a thing for her. She'd play up to his obvious devotion with carefully placed comments and raised eyebrows over the tops of medical charts.

He'd asked her out once. She'd fluttered her eyelids shyly and twisted her fingers through the curls at the nape of her neck. Offered back a suggestive _maybe_ that she absolutely did not mean.

Told herself the lie was to salvage his feelings, nothing more.

Accepted the coffee he delivered to her later that afternoon with a wide smile and tried not to watch the retreating figure of Alex Karev as he passed by in the background.

She always did want what she had to desperately chase.

 

 

 

 

 

She knows enough about death to know that it is nothing to be feared. That when your time is up, it is well and truly up and that no amount of praying for miracles will save you.

Heaven and angels and the fiery pits of hell are images for fairy-tales and Sunday morning bible stories. Nothing more.

On instances when it comes up in conversation, and it's a surprisingly common topic when you're a surgeon, she vehemently replies that she's not afraid of the end.

She doesn't know that this declaration is a lie until the barrel of a gun rises in her face and the final, chilling split-seconds of her life play out to a hammering soundtrack of unbridled terror.


End file.
